For certain IC and MEM devices, the environment in which they will be operating requires that they are hermetically sealed in order to operate properly. As used herein, when referring to the term "devices", it is meant to refer to MEM devices or IC devices that contain enclosed cavities. For these devices, then, some type of test or inspection is needed to assure that the ones which are not sealed properly are rejected. A common practice in the integrated circuit industry is to test for hermeticity using helium leak detectors, but this does not work for every type of package and substrate. While this method generally works well for ceramic packages, it does not work well with glass substrates since the glass will readily absorb the helium. The result is that the helium leak detector will detect a leak when in fact there may not be one. Consequently, the need arises for a reliable and inexpensive method to test for hermeticity of the devices, particularly for those applications that employ glass substrates.